Philip begged de Lussac to stay and dine, and also sent a telegram to Lorimer, to tell him the great news and ask him to try and join them. He needed friends to help him bear his joy. To bear hers, Dora would have chosen to be alone with Philip.
In moments of greatest joy a woman prefers solitude with the man she loves, and Dora was vexed that Philip should invite de Lussac and Lorimer to pass this evening with him.
The two sexes will probably never understand each other.
It may possibly be that each one judges the other by its own.
VII
THE NEW HOUSE
To Dora the vow that she had taken on her wedding-day was a sacred thing. As he knelt at her side in church, Philip had murmured low in her ear: "Before God and man I love you." This had sufficed her, and, following on it, even the words of the Church service pronounced by the priest had seemed almost superfluous. The phrase uttered in that solemn moment had sealed her fate and ordained her line of conduct. Her life belonged to this man. Besides, had she not in firm clear tones given her promise to love, honour, and obey him? To her this was no empty formula—it was an oath; and she had sworn that, come what would, how fatal soever to her personal happiness, she would be loyal to her vow.
She prepared to play her new rôle with the ardour which she had always shown in seconding her husband, even in the most trifling affairs of life, quietly effacing herself, satisfied and happy if Philip seemed to appreciate the efforts that she made to please him.
Philip left his house in Elm Avenue without even trying to sublet it. He took a house in Belgravia and installed himself there among the aristocracy and plutocracy of London. Mayfair is, perhaps, still more aristocratic and select; but it is sombre, its streets are narrow, and Philip had been too long accustomed to plenty of light to care to bury himself alive in the midst of its dark, depressing-looking streets. Mayfair is to Belgravia what the Rue St. Dominique is to the Avenue des Champs Elysées in Paris.